Way back when, there was no such thing as voicemail. If you wanted to leave someone a message you had to actually leave a recording on a tape machine at their house that answered the phone when they were away.
Old Answering Machine
Like today’s voicemail, there was a greeting message from the person you had called before you got to leave them a message.
Back in the day, you could tell who ran the household by who got to leave the recorded message on the answering machine. In most families it was the mom or dad. Some let the kids record, but a select few did something extra special.
For every idea, there’s a consumer. The answering machine greeting message was a marketplace waiting to be tapped, and tapped it was!
Companies began selling cassette tapes that contained different pre-recorded greetings that would play for your callers. From song parodies to the fancy British butler greeting, Americans snapped these up and laughed themselves straight into the nineties until voicemail became popular and eventually replaced the tapes.
